This past weekend, Zaferes won a silver medal at the Sarasota Americas Cup. After her maternity absence from the sport, she now has two races under her belt and has barely put a foot wrong.
Indeed, Zaferes has shown a lot of promising signs in her comeback.
Her next race was scheduled to be at the European Cup in Quarteira, Portugal, next weekend. Quarteira will play host to an exceptionally deep field, perhaps the deepest at the Continental Cup level of 2023.
The race will also be over the Olympic distance, a format Zaferes has not yet taken on following her return to the sport.
With the likes Bianca Seregni present in the swim and Cassandre Beaugrand on the run, it would have been a comprehensive test to say the least. While Continental Cups are seldom as hard on the bike as WTCS races, the strength of the field would nonetheless pose a trickier question for Zaferes than expected.
As a former world champion, though, she would have been able to call upon her vast tracts of experience to answer any such questions.
In the end, Zaferes has withdrawn from the race. She will instead next be racing at the Americas Triathlon Cup in St. Peters, Missouri. The St. Peters race will be in a month, in the middle of April. As such, it will give Zaferes a chance to recalibrate after racing on consecutive March weekends already.
It will also be over the Sprint distance which should enable her to maintain a more gradual return to the elite end of the sport.
